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    Jon Fosse Wants to Say the Unsayable

    When the Nobel Prize-winning author Jon Fosse was 7 years old, he had an accident that would shape his writing life.At home one day on his family’s small farm in Strandebarm, a village amid Norway’s western fjords, Fosse was carrying a bottle of fruit juice when he slipped on ice in the yard. As he hit the ground, the bottle smashed and a shard of glass slashed an artery in his wrist.Fosse’s parents rushed him to a doctor and, in the car, Fosse recalled recently, he had an out of body experience. “I saw myself from outside,” Fosse said in an interview. He assumed he was about to die, but he was also aware of a “kind of shimmering light,” he said.“Everything was very peaceful,” Fosse said: He felt “no sadness,” but rather a sense that there was “a beauty, a beauty to everything.”Fosse said that this childhood brush with death had influenced all his literary work: fiction, plays and poetry, for which he will receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in a ceremony on Sunday.The perspective he gained in the moment of his accident, Fosse explained, made its way into his writing: “I often say that there are two languages: The words that I wrote, the words you can understand, and behind that, there’s a silent language.” And it’s in that “silent language,” he added, that the real meaning may lie.In a lecture in Stockholm on Thursday, a ritual that all Nobel laureates observe before getting their awards, Fosse expanded a little on the idea of a silent language. “It is only in the silence that you can hear God’s voice,” he said. “Maybe.”To Fosse’s fans the spiritual and existential dimensions are a major part of the appeal. Anders Olsson, the chair of the Nobel committee that awarded Fosse the prize, said that Fosse’s work induced feelings and questions in readers “that ultimately exist beyond language.” The “deep sense of the inexpressible” in Fosse’s plays and novels leads readers “ever deeper into the experience of the divine,” Olsson said.Last month’s announcement that Fosse had won might have surprised some American readers. Fosse (pronounced FOSS-eh) only recently came to prominence in the English-speaking world with books that include “Septology,” a seven-part opus told in part as a stream of consciousness from the mind of an aging painter. Last year, sections of “Septology” were nominated for the National Book Award and the International Booker Prize. “A Shining,” a novella about a man lost in a snowy forest who is comforted by a mysterious light, was published in Britain on the day of the Nobel announcement, and in the United States afterward.Yet on continental Europe, Fosse had been a star for decades, less for his novels than for his plays, which have been compared to those of Samuel Beckett and Henrik Ibsen and staged at some of the most prestigious playhouses.Fosse’s books on display in an Oslo bookstore. His work only gained recent recognition in the English-speaking world.Thomas Ekström for The New York TimesSarah Cameron Sunde, an artist based in the United States who has translated Fosse’s plays into English and directed several of them in New York, said that the American audience’s lack of recognition for Fosse could be explained, perhaps, by his frequently morbid subject matter: His writing often features characters wracked by loneliness, desperate for connection and contemplating the end, and many of his plays involve suicide. “Everyone is very afraid of death over here,” she said.In a two-hour interview in Oslo last week, Fosse, 64, said that as a child he didn’t intend to become a writer. His father ran the family’s small farm and managed the village store, and his mother was a homemaker. In his youth, Fosse recalled, he was more interested in rock music than in reading. He grew out his hair, which he still wears in a ponytail, and played guitar — badly, he said — with bands at school dances.But at age 14, for reasons he said he couldn’t explain, he “stopped playing, and even stopped listening to music,” and instead focused on writing poems and stories. His writing was rhythmic, filled with repetition, he said, as if he were trying to maintain a connection to his musical past. “It has been like that for 40 years,” Fosse said.His early books, including his 1983 debut, “Raudt, Svart” (in English, “Red, Black”), were “filled with pain,” Fosse said, often featuring characters trapped in moments of indecision. His second novel, “Stengd Gitar” (“Closed Guitar”), for instance, is about a woman who accidentally locks herself out of her apartment while her baby sleeps inside, then agonizes over what to do next.At the time he was writing these early books, during his 20s, Fosse was an atheist and surrounded by people who were equally irreligious. He taught at a writing academy in the city of Bergen, in Norway, where his circle included “intellectuals, students and young artists” who were committed communists and thought that art and literature should be political. (Karl Ove Knausgaard was one of his students.)But Fosse didn’t agree. “Literature ought to be engaged in itself,” he said, rather than trying to achieve a political, social or even religious goal.As he wrote more, Fosse said, the process itself led him to begin to question his atheism. He never planned a story or a poem in advance — but when the words just tumbled out, he started to wonder where it all came from. He began exploring religion, including attending Quaker meetings, and “a kind of reconciliation, or peace,” came into his writing, he said.Cecilie Seiness, Fosse’s editor for the past decade at Det Norske Samlaget, a Norwegian publisher, said that his interest in religion went beyond his own personal conviction. In the 1990s, Seiness said, Fosse briefly published a literary journal “about bringing God into writing, in opposition to the political writing of the time.” Yet Fosse’s novels and plays were never didactic, she added. “It’s not trying to convert you, absolutely not,” Seiness said. “It’s just about being open to the mysteries of life.”“I often say that there are two languages,” Fosse said. “The words that I wrote, the words you can understand, and behind that, there’s a silent language.” Thomas Ekström for The New York TimesDespite his prolific output — often, a book a year — Fosse’s career only really took off in the mid-1990s when he pivoted to the theater. Soon, he was winning major awards for his stark plays, including “I Am the Wind,” whose two characters are simply called “The One” and “The Other,” and “Deathvariations,” about an estranged couple confronting their daughter’s suicide.Milo Rau, one of Europe’s most acclaimed theater directors, said that in the early 2000s, the theater world in some parts of Europe was gripped by “Fosse hype.” “The theater scene was overwhelmed by his spirituality, minimalism, seriousness, melancholy,” Rau said. Fosse’s plays “felt completely new and out of time,” he added.Fosse said he drank to cope with the demands of a globe-trotting theatrical life, and the alcohol eventually took over. At one point in 2012, he said, he was drinking a bottle of vodka a day, and barely eating. He collapsed with alcohol poisoning and had to spend several weeks in a hospital.As a son drove him home from that enforced convalescence, Fosse said, he told himself, “It’s enough, Jon,” and never drank again. Soon after, he also converted to Catholicism. Attending mass, Fosse said, “can take you out of yourself somewhere, to another place.” The feeling was similar to the one he got when writing — or drinking, he added.A year after his collapse, Fosse began to be talked up as a Nobel Prize contender, though he did not become a laureate for another decade. By the time of the announcement, he had long completed “Septology,” the multipart novel, at points romantic, at others existential, in which the main character, Asle, a painter, looks back on experiences that are remarkably similar to some in Fosse’s life.At one point in the doorstop of a novel, which the Nobel committee called Fosse’s “magnum opus,” Asle recalls a childhood accident in which he slips in a farmyard and slashes an artery. In the book’s repetitive style, Asle describes the incident, in which he finds himself surrounded by a “glinting shining transparent yellow dust and he’s not scared, he feels something like happiness.”But then he stops picturing the scene. He can’t think about that moment anymore, Asle says. “It’s better to put it in my pictures as best I can.” More

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    ‘Squid Game: The Challenge’: Hits, Misses and the Bizarre Ending

    On Wednesday, the winner of the Netflix competition reality show based on the blood-drenched drama was crowned. But did the spinoff deliver? Spoilers below.It all came down to rock, paper, scissors on Wednesday night’s finale of “Squid Game: The Challenge.” After many rounds of trying to deduce her opponent’s next move, Mai Whelan (Player 287), an immigration adjudicator, grandmother and Navy veteran from Virginia who came to the United States as an 8-year-old refugee from Vietnam, triumphed over Phill Cain (Player 451), a scuba instructor from Hawaii — and 454 other players.Her prize: a staggering $4.56 million. “Anything is possible,” she said after her win. “Even when you feel down and afraid, you have to pick yourself up, be a strong person and focus.”“The Challenge,” a reality competition show, is based on Netflix’s dystopian, blood-drenched South Korean blockbuster drama “Squid Game,” in which contestants play schoolyard games for the chance to win an exorbitant cash prize. On the original series, however, the hundreds who lose die gruesome deaths. On “The Challenge,” filmed on a set in England, no one died, of course; they only pretended to.And like on the drama, they made alliances, broke alliances, back stabbed, shot daggers with their eyes, and wept and wept. They also played a few games from the original, including the glass bridge challenge (no, the players didn’t free fall), the marbles face-off and the dalgona candy game (which, in real life, involved copious saliva).On Wednesday, Netflix announced that the highly popular show was renewed for second season; Season 2 of the drama is also in the works. Also on Wednesday, a Netflix live fan experience, Squid Game: The Trials, opened on the “Price Is Right” soundstage in Los Angeles.As for the televised competition, it required some mental gymnastics, and was alternately disappointing and delicious. Here’s what the competition got right, and what may have left some viewers underwhelmed or unsettled.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in December

    Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic, “Maestro,” and a “Chicken Run” sequel highlight this month’s slate.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of December’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘May December’Now streamingBased loosely on the story of Mary Kay Letourneau — a woman who made tabloid headlines in the 1990s for having a sexual affair with a teenage boy, whom she later married — this arch melodrama stars Julianne Moore as the scandal-plagued Gracie Atherton-Yoo, who is about to be played in a movie by Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), a popular TV actress. As Elizabeth spends time with Gracie to try and understand her life better, her questions disrupt the Atherton-Yoo family and push Gracie’s husband, Joe (Charles Melton), to reflect more deeply on what happened to him when he was a kid. Directed by the venerable indie filmmaker Todd Haynes (best-known for “Far from Heaven” and “Carol”), “May December” is at times discomfiting and at times darkly funny. It’s an artful, absorbing look at a performer using the excuse of researching a role as a way to explore the taboo.‘Leave the World Behind’Starts streaming: Dec. 8The “Mr. Robot” writer-director Sam Esmail adapts Rumaan Alam’s novel “Leave the World Behind,” about a Brooklyn family that rents a vacation home on Long Island, right before a massive cyberattack leads to power blackouts and internet outages across the country. Complicating the situation further, the house’s owner G.H. Scott (Mahershala Ali) shows up with his daughter, Ruth (Myha’la), asking to take refuge — a request that rankles his renter, the cynical misanthrope Amanda Sandford (Julia Roberts). Ethan Hawke also stars as Amanda’s genial husband, Clay, who tries to make peace and to protect the Sandfords’ kids as the natural world around them starts to go haywire. Esmail leans into the eerie beauty of a collapsing society while also probing the tense relationship between these privileged strangers — of similar social backgrounds, yet divided by race — as together they navigate the early days of a possible apocalypse.‘Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget’Starts streaming: Dec. 15This sequel to Aardman Animation’s hit 2000 film “Chicken Run” features a mostly new cast, voicing the original’s beloved characters. Thandiwe Newton now plays Ginger, who in the first movie led a band of rebellious poultry on an escape mission, fleeing an egg farm for the safety of a remote island bird sanctuary. In “Dawn of the Nugget,” Ginger and her mate Rocky (now voiced by Zachary Levi), need to break into a factory, to save their daughter, Molly (Bella Ramsey), and to keep their former captor Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) from exacting revenge on all of chicken-kind with her fast-food innovations. The veteran animator Sam Fell (who previously co-directed Aardman’s “Flushed Away”) takes over as the film’s director, working from a script co-written by the original’s screenwriter, Karey Kirkpatrick.‘Maestro’Starts streaming: Dec. 20After the critical, commercial and Oscar success of Bradley Cooper’s 2018 directorial debut, “A Star Is Born,” the actor takes an even bigger swing with his second film: a biographical drama exploring the life, loves and career of the esteemed American composer Leonard Bernstein. Cooper plays Bernstein and Carey Mulligan plays Felicia Montealegre, who became the musician’s wife and conscience, remaining a valued companion even throughout his extramarital affairs. “Maestro” balances glimpses of Bernstein’s personal life with a celebration of his efforts to bring music education to the masses. Cooper and his crew also bring some visual splendor, making the film look as lush and richly detailed as the kinds of movies Bernstein would have seen in his 1950s heyday.‘Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire’Starts streaming: Dec. 22The “300” and “Justice League” director Zack Snyder launches his second Netflix franchise (following his “Army of the Dead” series) with this ambitious space opera, inspired by the science-fiction and martial arts movies and comic books that Snyder loved in his youth. “Rebel Moon” is set on Veldt, a relatively peaceful satellite within a vast and tyrannical interstellar empire. When the powers that be suddenly take an interest in Veldt, a former imperial soldier named Kora (Sofia Boutella) finds herself having to recruit an eclectic band of locals to fight against the authoritarian regime. The first movie has been divided into two parts, although with the time Snyder has reportedly put into mythology-building — and that the production team has put into set-building — expect more stories to be told in this universe.Also streaming now:“Sweet Home” Season 2“Blood Coast” Season 1“The Archies”“Hilda” Season 3“I Hate Christmas” Season 2“My Life with the Walter Boys” Season 1Coming soon:Dec. 12“Under Pressure: The U.S. Women’s World Cup Team”Dec. 14“The Crown” Season 6, Part 2Dec. 15“Carol & The End of the World”“Face to Face with ETA: Conversations with a Terrorist”Dec. 22“Gyeongseong Creature” Season 1Dec. 25“Star Trek: Prodigy” Season 1Dec. 26“Thank You, I’m Sorry”Dec. 27“Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare”Dec. 28“Pokémon Concierge” Season 1Dec. 29“Money Heist: Berlin” Season 1 More

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    Review: In ‘The Salvagers,’ a Battered Family Finds Strength

    Harrison David Rivers’s new drama, featuring a strong cast, is having its world premiere at Yale Repertory Theater.Harrison David Rivers’s merciful new drama, “The Salvagers,” is not a romance, but it emphatically is a love story: about a furious, heartsick young actor and his imperfect parents, steadfastly trying to help him heal.At 23, Boseman Salvage Jr. hadn’t meant to end up back in snowy Chicago, where he grew up and where his parents split while he was away at college. He certainly hadn’t meant to move in with his father, whom he loathes with a smoldering, adolescent contempt. But after an episode that Boseman Sr. refers to, obliquely, as “your cry for help,” Boseman Jr. came home.In Mikael Burke’s world-premiere production at Yale Repertory Theater, Taylor A. Blackman makes a blistering young Boseman — self-hating, self-harming and horribly lost, but with such a huge chip on his shoulder that hostility could easily be all his father sees.Yet Boseman Sr., played by the rock-solid Julian Elijah Martinez, is stability itself. He is not the soul of patience — who could be, with such a tetchy grown kid around the house? — but he is not going anywhere. And he will nudge his son about taking his pills, and cook multicourse meals for him night after night, for as long as it takes to nurture him back to mental health. (The suggestion of a domestic interior, with a glacial mountain of snow hulking over it, is by B Entsminger.)A significant detail about Boseman Sr., a locksmith, and Nedra (Toni Martin), his postal worker ex-wife: He was only 14 and she just 16 when they had Boseman Jr. But their son’s torments have their roots elsewhere, tangled in notions of filial inheritance and parental expectation — as if, by virtue of sharing his father’s name, he is meant to be a duplicate of him. In which case being gay, which Boseman Jr. cannot admit, would count in his own mind as a failure.The doting, extroverted Nedra, who can recite her son’s “King Lear” audition monologue in unison with him — his “Hamlet,” too — already sees her child for who he is. When he tells her he’s met a woman, she blurts her surprise: “Your person’s a she?”That would be Paulina (Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew), the least organically written of the principal characters. Blackman and Bartholomew never find even a friend-crush energy for the relationship, the script’s single over-engineered strand.Far more magnetic is the tiptoe tumble into love between Boseman Sr. and Elinor (McKenzie Chinn), a substitute teacher whom he meets when she locks herself out of her apartment. Martinez and Chinn have an appealing chemistry, and Chinn manages the delicate task of keeping Elinor sympathetic even when she vastly oversteps, revealing secrets that require Boseman Jr. to rethink his own history.Rivers pushes too hard at times, as when characters twice voice confusion about the practicalities of two people in the same family having the same name — not exactly unheard-of.What he does with tremendous dexterity, though, is show us a family, battered by pain, that through devotion and forgiveness declines to rupture. There is good that the Salvages can restore, all of them, by tending to one another and letting themselves be tended to.The SalvagersThrough Dec. 16 at Yale Repertory Theater, New Haven, Conn.; yalerep.org. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. More

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    ‘Our Life in Art’ Review: Stanislavski’s Work and Times

    In Paris, a new production from Richard Nelson imagines a day on tour with Konstantin Stanislavski’s theater company in 1923, but misses the historical context.What do you know about the Russian theater director Konstantin Stanislavski? If your answer doesn’t go much further than “He designed a method for training actors,” you are much like the audience members who were recently mystified by parts of “Our Life in Art,” a highly anticipated collaboration between the American playwright and director Richard Nelson and Théâtre du Soleil, in Paris.Its title is a nod to “My Life in Art,” an autobiography by Stanislavski that first came out in English in the 1920s. The “Our” refers to the renowned company he co-founded, the Moscow Art Theater, which, in 1923, embarked on a lengthy tour of the United States. In this new play, presented in collaboration with the multidisciplinary Festival d’Automne, Nelson imagines a day the company spent between performances in Chicago.Onstage, Stanislavski and his 10-person ensemble — who mostly use Russian nicknames for each other — bicker, eat dinner and talk about Russia and the United States. There are oblique references to the 1917 Russian Revolution and its aftermath; to Anton Chekhov, whose plays the Moscow Art Theater championed; and to the impact the tour and Stanislavski’s theories had on American art.But it takes much of the play to even establish that one of the characters was Chekhov’s wife. The complex historical context to “Our Life in Art” is rarely addressed head-on, and won’t necessarily be obvious to Parisian theatergoers, most of whom are also encountering Nelson’s work for the first time. While he is a prominent figure in American theater, with several dozens plays to his name (including a recent 12-part project, “Rhinebeck Panorama”), this is the first production Nelson has directed in French.The sense that “Our Life in Art” wasn’t meant for its current audience is appropriate. Nelson originally intended for the play to be performed in Russia. He made several trips to the country, in 2020 and 2021, to start work on a production there, Nelson explains in a playbill interview.Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine upended these plans. Not long afterward, the Théâtre du Soleil — one of France’s top theater companies, led by the renowned director Ariane Mnouchkine — came calling, and Nelson offered “Our Life in Art” to the company.Before the performance started, Mnouchkine explained that there were donation boxes in the hall to raise money for humanitarian relief in Ukraine. In the playbill, Nelson also said that the war had “added another dimension to the play, a feeling of powerlessness.”On opening night, there was a palpable sense of curiosity at La Cartoucherie, the company’s home in Vincennes, a Paris suburb. Mnouchkine has personally overseen nearly every production performed by the Théâtre du Soleil since 1964, and Nelson is only the third outside director to work with the troupe in 59 years. The last was Robert Lepage, from Canada, whose 2018 work “Kanata — Episode 1 — The Controversy” brought, well, controversy.The Théâtre du Soleil tends to overhaul its own venue for every new production, and “Our Life in Art” is no exception. Instead of the usual auditorium, the play is staged in a narrow space flanked by audience members on both sides. (The seating, akin to tiered pews, is exceptionally uncomfortable.)This allows Nelson, who often works in the round, to create a new level of intimacy with the actors. Whereas Mnouchkine likes sweeping, large-scale tableaux, Nelson prefers to zoom in on smaller situations and conversations.Around a large table, a couple, Nina and Vassily, trade barbs about Vassily’s cheating tendencies. Pyotr, a younger actor, is reprimanded for drinking too much and playing Lopakhin, a central character in Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” too coarsely. Masha, another company member, cooks pelmeni, Russian dumplings, for a celebratory dinner, during which everyone toasts the 25th anniversary of the Moscow Art Theater.Like the company onstage, the Théâtre du Soleil is an ensemble theater, with a permanent troupe of actors and a singular vision, sustained over decades. Its players have a different kind of rapport than freelancers: When the characters sit down to eat together, their banter feels entirely natural. Nelson brings out a welcome new side of them, more casual than Mnouchkine’s directing style.“Our Life in Art” really shines when Nelson plays up the contrast between the artists’ lives and the ideological pressure they were under in the Soviet Union. The play is book-ended by two letters Stanislavski wrote to Stalin in the 1930s, read onstage by the actor Arman Saribekyan. In them, Stanislavski praises “the great Communist Party” and the “spring of life” it supposedly brought to Russian art. “That’s why I love my homeland,” he says.Saribekyan explains that Stanislavski signed the letters under duress, and that their sentiment is purposely at odds with the restrained, laconic director we witness in the play, as performed by Maurice Durozier. Stanislavski grew up in an affluent family under the czars before adjusting to the communist system after the Revolution, and Nelson touches on the “re-education” that Stanislavski had to endure.There is a sense, in “Our Life In Art,” that Stanislavski and his touring actors are trapped between ruthless American businessmen — who rig the contracts to put all the financial risk on the company — and the looming threat of being deemed unpatriotic when they go home. The artists’ interactions with Russian émigrés in the United States are reported as suspicious in the Soviet press, and clippings are sent to the company as a warning of sorts.In scenes like these, art and ideology collide. At one point, Stanislavski makes a speech about the players’ shared craft, their ability to zoom in on gestures and create art through verisimilitude, rather than through ideas. This is also what Nelson does in “Our Life in Art,” but that means that many things — from the politics of the time to shifting expectations of theater in Soviet Russia — go unexplained. Making them more accessible would only enhance the experience.Our Life in ArtThrough March 3, 2024 at the Théâtre du Soleil, Paris; theatre-du-soleil.fr. More

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    ‘Waitress: The Musical’ Review: A Big-Screen Helping of a Broadway Hit

    Sara Bareilles is the heart and soul of this live capture of her musical.The musical “Waitress” is about liberation, empowerment and pie — three things that are easy to wholeheartedly endorse, and have turned it into a Broadway hit. Brett Sullivan’s live capture confirms the show’s biggest asset, nearly 10 years after its premiere: Sara Bareilles’s enduring wonder of a score, which skillfully melds a pop melodicism rooted in the 1970s with the narrative demands of musical theater. Bareilles’s first Broadway effort displays a joyful confidence and an unerring sense of emotional release. Unfortunately, the glare of the cameras also highlights flaws that were easier to overlook onstage, mostly having to do with the way power imbalances are depicted.Shot on Broadway in 2021, this version of Diane Paulus’s production stars Bareilles in the title role of Jenna, who is mired in an abusive relationship with good ol’ boy Earl (Joe Tippett) and finds an escape by baking creative, delicious pies for the diner where she works. After discovering she’s pregnant, Jenna has an affair with her obstetrician, Dr. Pomatter (Drew Gehling) — who is very sweet and very married. This played better at the theater, just like a subplot involving the relationship between Jenna’s colleague Dawn (Caitlin Houlahan) by stalkerish goofball Ogie (Christopher Fitzgerald, excellent in a tricky part).Still, this is Bareilles’s show in every way. While she doesn’t quite match the emotional subtlety of Jessie Mueller, who originated Jenna, she has grown in leaps and bounds as an actress and provides a warm anchor for the movie. Thanks to her, this second helping goes down easy.Waitress: The MusicalNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 24 minutes. In theaters. More

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    Who Is Meg Bellamy, Who Plays Kate Middleton in ‘The Crown’?

    When Meg Bellamy got the call that would change her life — the one telling her that after months of auditions, it was she, among thousands of hopefuls, who would play Kate Middleton in the final season of “The Crown” — she was already standing in the shadow of Windsor Castle. But she wasn’t looking the part of a royal just yet.“I was crouched in costume among the bin lorries of a delivery car park at Legoland,” Ms. Bellamy, 21, said at a London hotel suite last month. “Until that point, my most regular acting gig had been playing a red plastic brick.”In 2022, and with no professional acting experience, she was working as a performer at the theme park when she spotted a casting call on Twitter for the role of Kate Middleton. Competition to play one of the most famous women in the world during her college years was fierce. Thousands of young actresses were posting videos about their auditions. But after a neighbor remarked on her resemblance to Britain’s future queen, Ms. Bellamy, crushed after several drama school rejections schools, decided to try out for the part. Three weeks after sending a tape, she got a call — the first in what would be a several monthslong casting process.“I never really believed I would get the role, not in the beginning anyway,” she said. “But then with every round, I started to feel like I had a real chance, and that it might actually be mine to keep. When it was, I was completely shellshocked.”Now, more than two years after that call, Ms. Bellamy’s trajectory from obscurity to the brink of stardom appears to be well underway. Last week, she appeared on the front of The Daily Telegraph, which used a still from the series that recreated the moment in 2002 when Ms. Middleton, on a charity fashion catwalk in a daringly sheer dress, was rumored to have first turned the head of Prince William.This week, ahead of the release of Part 2 of “The Crown” on Dec. 14, Ms. Bellamy was on the red carpet at the London premiere in a creamy Valentino column gown — 24 hours after attending the Fashion Awards, where she wore a blazer dress with a suit and tie by Huishan Zhang.And for months she has been courted by big fashion names like Gucci and Dior — she attended Dior shows in Paris in July and September — which have a habit of snapping up emerging talent with juicy contracts before they ascend to heights of celebrity. After all, if a fashion house can’t hire the Princess of Wales to sell lipstick and handbags, perhaps the unknown actress playing her to an audience of millions is the next best thing.Ms. Bellamy at a finale celebration of “The Crown” in London this month. “Until last month I’d never been to Hollywood,” she said. “Then I was not just there, but on a red carpet with people shouting my name.”Lia Toby/Getty ImagesMs. Bellamy at the annual Fashion Awards in London in December.Dominic Lipinski/Getty ImagesShe attended the Los Angeles premiere in November.Michael Tran/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOver its six seasons, the casting of “The Crown” has largely been anchored by a constellation of established performers, though it has also boosted the sparkly careers of several new faces, including Emma Corrin, who played Princess Diana in Season 4. What was it about Ms. Bellamy that prompted executives to take a chance on her for this role?“We found that there was an openness to her, an intelligence and a sweetness to her, and a chemistry between her and Ed McVey, who plays Prince William,” said Robert Sterne, the casting director for “The Crown.” “You wanted to go on the journey with Meg. You wanted her to tell you the story.”Doing Kate JusticeMuch has already been made of the parallels between Ms. Bellamy and Ms. Middleton, beyond their delicate features and masses of glossy auburn hair. How both were raised by close families in the royal county of Berkshire. (Ms. Bellamy was actually born in Leeds, in Yorkshire, and has a light Northern twinge that still lingers on some of her vowels.) How both were extremely sporty at school, with a particular love of lacrosse. (Ms. Bellamy, who said she was academic, was also head girl, which is similar to a class president.)But unlike the Princess of Wales, who studied art history at the University of St. Andrews, Ms. Bellamy didn’t attend university. After a number of star turns in school musical productions, including Sandy in “Grease” and Scaramouche in “We Will Rock You,” she wanted only to act. She is acutely aware that people wait a lifetime for a break like hers, which came months after leaving high school.Before the six month shoot, Ms. Bellamy spent months preparing to play Ms. Middleton. She watched documentaries and read newspaper clips compiled by researchers. She also worked with movement and voice coaches to perfect her performance. She took home costumes — a nostalgic Noughties-inspired wardrobe of low-rise flared jeans, peplum tops, chunky belts and fringed suede knee-high boots — to wear as she practiced her lines.Ms. Bellamy as Kate Middleton and Ed McVey, who plays Prince William, in a scene from “The Crown.” Netflix/The Crown“I must have looked insane,” Ms. Bellamy said. “I would be dressed as her, reading a book about her and trying to sound like her while walking around the house.” She noted that while there is endless footage of Ms. Middleton after she formally joined the royal family in 2011, there is little — beyond a handful of paparazzi photographs — from her time at St. Andrews, where she first befriended and then fell in love with Prince William.“Her first press interview was when she became engaged at 29, so she was something of a blank canvas,” Ms. Bellamy said. “I spent a lot of time thinking about what she would have been like before she knew where life would take her and that William would become her husband. I hope that I’ve done Kate justice.”At the same time, she added, it was nice to remove the layer of complexities that come with being a royal and just play her as a girl who’s going to university and falling in love.When photographs of Ms. Bellamy and Mr. McVey filming at St. Andrews emerged this spring — and ever since then — there was intense online interest in her private life and next career steps. (So far, Ms. Bellamy has yet to announce her next role.) Lately she has been working with the stylist Felicity Kay to hone her public image and build a brand for herself.Has being thrust into the spotlight given her a vague notion of what it must be like to be a royal?“It’s something I’ve been thinking about, especially as we’ve done more press ahead of the release,” she said. “I really can’t imagine the level of pressure royals face day to day. I mean, until last month I’d never been to Hollywood. Then I was not just there, but on a red carpet with people shouting my name.”She added: “But I keep telling myself that this is something I’ve always dreamed about. You have to remember that, before all of this, I wore a school uniform and could only afford high-street brands like Primark.” More

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    Jimmy Kimmel Is Perfectly Prepared to Believe Trump Will Be a Dictator

    Kimmel skewered the former president for telling Sean Hannity he would act like a dictator on his first day in office if elected again.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.A Swing and a MissIn a Fox News town hall with Donald Trump on Tuesday night, Sean Hannity asked the former president if he planned to abuse power if elected to a second term. Trump declined twice to give an outright denial, saying he wouldn’t be a dictator, “except for Day 1.”Jimmy Kimmel called Trump “Scammy Sosa” on Wednesday, saying that Trump “somehow managed to swing and miss at the softest of all balls.”“I’m tired of these fake questions, like, ‘Will you become a dictator?’ Of course, he’s going to become — he said he’s going to become a dictator. Basically, in November, we’re going to be voting on whether we will ever vote again.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Here we go again, OK? Once again, Trump is telling us exactly what he is going to do, and no one’s believing him. You Trump supporters are all in my mentions with your clown emojis saying, ‘You Democratic shill! You’re overreacting. Trump’s not a dictator!’ He is telling you, OK? And, no, it doesn’t make it any better that he says he will just be a dictator for one day.” — CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD“All kidding aside, how about Sean Hannity having to squeeze him to say he won’t be a dictator? I mean, how clear does Trump have to make it? Hannity was like, ‘Eh, want to take another stab at that one, bro?’ ‘Nope!’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And by the way, I can’t believe I have to say this, but ‘Are you going to be a dictator?’ is not a normal question you should have to ask a presidential candidate. If you have to ask your babysitter, ‘Are you going to eat my kids?’, it doesn’t matter what their answer is. The fact that you needed to ask them means you should get another babysitter.” — CHARLAMAGNE THA GODThe Punchiest Punchlines (On Taylor Time Edition)“Time magazine today named their person of the year for 2023, and that person is Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift beat out Vladimir Putin, the president of China and King Charles. And, I don’t know, it makes sense — those guys are terrible singers.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The editor in chief for Time said Taylor Swift is ‘the rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story.’ And also, he said, ‘We really wanted to sell some magazines this year.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Taylor was like, ‘Of all the honors I’ve had today, this is definitely in the Top 50.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Time actually released multiple covers of Taylor, including this one where she’s posing with her cat. Most cats think they’re better than you, but that cat knows it’s better than you.” — JIMMY FALLON“Taylor Swift is Time’s person of the year, which is terrible news for Taylor Swift. Have you seen how the past few winners of this are doing? Last year, Zelensky won — how’s Ukraine doing now? Year before that, Elon Musk got the cover — how’s Twitter doing now? Year before that, Biden and Kamala got the cover — enough said! Forget Travis Kelce: if this pattern keeps up, next year, Taylor Swift is going to be dating the punter for the New York Jets.” — CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD“Anyway, congratulations to Taylor. Now, maybe people will finally start talking about her.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth Watching“The Daily Show” entered the “RamaVerse” with the Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightOlivia Rodrigo will sit down with Jimmy Fallon on Thursday before her return to “Saturday Night Live” this weekend.Also, Check This OutFrom left, Carroll O’Connor as Archie Bunker, Rob Reiner as Mike Stivic and Sally Struthers as Gloria Bunker Stivic in Norman Lear’s “All in the Family.” CBS, via Getty ImagesRob Reiner remembered his friend, the television pioneer Norman Lear, whom he called “a real champion of America.” More